2022-12-23: Dolls
- Cast: Asuka Shikinami Langley, Yuta Hibiki
- Where: Tsutsujidai
- Date: U.C. 0096 12 23
- Summary: It's finally time for Gridman to leave the hospital. As he's preparing himself, Asuka overhears...
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Every day spent in his hospital room is a day he isn't accomplishing his purpose. A day his allies are left to fend for themselves. A day he's decieving those who had supported him.
Perhaps spurred on by his most recent visitor's reaction to his true identity, Gridman has been requesting to leave the hospital. The Neon Genesis Junior High Students are capable of managing his care, and other patients need the room far more than Gridman does.
Max has stepped outside to arrange for a wheelchair sturdy enough for Tsutsujidai's current state, leaving Gridman on his own for the moment. Sitting up, propped against several pillows, he's practicing.
"I am Gridman." A pause. "My name is Gridman." A pause. "Hello, friends. I have news."
With a slow exhale of breath, he lays back against the pillows and stares at the ceiling.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Yuta had probably noticed the gigantic Evangelion moving throughout the town over the past few days when he was staring out his hospital window.
Crimson, and the size of Gridman itself, tethered to the city's power generators, it would dig through the rubble of buildings that the Carpenters had not yet reached, every so often she might call out on a loudspeaker for a squad to come to her location.
It meant she found food.
Sometimes if he looked at it for too long, it would look like its four green 'sensors' were turning to look directly at him.
Today however, the giant is hunched over, inert, silent. There is no end of a transformation with an Evangelion, it simply continues to exist at all times.
There is a pilot, and there is an outer shell that enacts their will.
If only things were always that simple huh?
Asuka is at the hospital today, and it's not to visit Yuta. At least that's what she tells herself. It would be the human thing to do to visit someone. People visit people when they're ill.
Yuko visited her when she was hurt.
She's just here for the relief efforts, she's working, she's in her PLUG SUIT (Indeed she hadn't worn basically anything else this whole time). She's already been to logistics and marked off every building she's searched on a map of the city, looking at promising leads for more locations.
She's marching back by when she hears. 'I am Gridman.' 'My name is Gridman.' 'Hello, friends. I have news.'
It's a thoroughly human thing to do, to practice speaking. However something about the tone and cadence of it stops her a pace or two past Yuta's room. The girl's head suddenly leans back, tilted, auburn hair listing sideways on her head from gravity.
And she just stares.
Gridman may not notice this act by itself, but before long the next time he looks up. Asuka is standing there, leaning against the door frame, arms crossed - still staring.
She hasn't said a singular word.
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
"Maybe the secret is in the facial expressions." Gridman says to himself. Lowering his gaze from the ceiling, he's already trying to tilt his lips upward into a smile (a motion so familiar and so impossible), when --
"Asuka."
Yuta's eyes were blue, a sort of unreal color no natural creature could possess. They sparkled with life and emotion.
Gridman's eyes are yellow. A truly unreal color, no natural creature could possess. They're flat and expressionless.
"..."
Staring at his fellow redhead, Gridman seems to be at a loss. "How much did you hear?"
Now that she's close by, Asuka might notice an odd echo to the young man's voice. It sounds robotic. It sounds like two voices layered together. There's no inflection. She's heard Gridman's voice in battle before, but even that isn't a perfect match.
Asuka's wearing her pilot suit. "...you look nice."
He's always been a little envious of the cool matching suits the Eva pilots all get.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
At some point, even though Asuka's staring, it feels like she's also not, it's like she's looking past him. Like Gridman's words are just fading away into white noise.
'Asuka.'
Her attention snaps back. 'How much did you hear?'
"Enough." Is her answer. In contrast to the gold eyes, Asuka's eyes are so very blue. Almost a reflection of the color that the boy in front of her once possessed.
The strangely mechanical echo is something she marks. '...you look nice.'
"You don't have to force it." As she regards him more closely, "Or pretend to be something you're not."
There's no harshness, there's just this complete, absence of feeling. "You're Gridman, not some awkward kid who says things like 'You know, um, Gridman can protect you too!'"
Even her mimicry doesn't carry the same feeling, there's an absence of feeling in how she even echoes the words as she asks, "Akane killed that kid, didn't she?"
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
"I wasn't forcing it." Gridman says back, placidly. "I have always been envious of your ability to look nice in the color red."
Asuka... figures out what's going on far more quickly than anyone else has. But there isn't the same venom from her as there was from Eisen, nor Kaworu's gentle acceptance. Gridman has no idea what she's feeling. They've never been close, even when Asuka was a resident of Tsutsujidai.
"In a sense, I suppose she did." Gridman says, shifting his gaze to look out the window. That red Eva dominates the skyline. He wonders what the civilians must make of it. "While I slept, I realized I have always been Gridman. I simply did not realize in in this form. The Yuta Hibiki you knew was a piece of my soul reflected through Yuta's existence."
Yellow eyes turn back to hers. "The true Yuta Hibiki has slept in his own mind all this time. You have never known him. Only me."
There's something plaintive in that metallic echo. A cry for acceptance.
"His memories are within me. But, as you said. I do not wish to pretend. It feels unnatural, somehow, despite... Almost a year of existing under that impression. And I do not wish to decieve any of my allies." A breath. A steady gaze. "I am a Hyper Agent."
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
"That can't be true." Asuka retorts immediately, "Unless you mean Eva Unit-02's ability to wear the Color Red. Two of us? We've never met like this before now."
There's no venom in that either, simply a matter of fact statement. 'I don't know you.' 'Unless you mean the Giant that fought at our sides.'
Gridman explains, and Asuka looks away towards the windows too as she does. She doesn't say anything for a time.
"So what you're telling me is Yuta was always just a fragment of you - and thus, not his own being?"
And now Gridman will see it, the sheer intensity of the way she stares at him. "What are you, stupid? That's not how it works. You don't get it at all."
Despite her saying it, there's still no harshness, just - intensity, as she uncrosses her arms, and moves towards his bed, "You don't understand a single thing. You know what you get when a part of a soul splits off from the whole?"
me me me mememememememememememememememememe
It throbs in her head, it hurts, the pain of it, of that knowledge. As Asuka's palms come to rest on the foot of his bed. As she's still staring at him in those blue eyes.
"Not. You."
Asuka's voice, rasps faintly.
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
"...yes." Gridman says. There's no point in antagonizing her by trying to sort things out now.
And again: "Yes."
Yellow eyes blink widely as Asuka expresses herself. This... isn't like his memories of her. Normally there'd be /venom/ and ferocity in her words, but now? She's focused, certainly, but--
Another rejection. Gridman can't help but lower his eyes to the end of his bed, choosing to look at Asuka's hands instead of her face. "I see. Then, what would you advise I call myself? What words are most proper to describe my experience? I... do not wish to cause distress. I do not wish to be dishonest."
Asuka's voice rasps. Gridman looks up, again exposing her to the full power of that altered gaze. "...are you alright?"
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Asuka is not alright.
She's also in an awful position. Her entire existence is a classified secret. A fragment of the soul of a girl, stitched together and placed inside a clone.
Is she then just her Original?
Well? Is she?
She can't very well confide this in him. To do so would invite questions, and more questions.
He asks though, and Asuka takes a breath, and suddenly some of the tension in her relaxes, "Call yourself Gridman, the Hyperagent. ... But saying he's only a part of you? That? That's minimizing. You may have his memories - it's may be convenient to just think of him as a time in your life when you were messed up - broken."
Asuka's blue eyes look down to try and catch his eyes, "But to everyone else? He was real. They had their own feelings about him that had nothing to do with Gridman. /You/ have your own feelings about him - the way you speak about him, even if it's only how you perceive /his/ memories in a way that's different than you did before."
A breath, and Asuka tears her eyes away from him, "Fine. I'm perfectly fine."
Who in the history of humanity who has spoken those words was actually fine? Then again, would Gridman even know that?
He's not human... then again, neither is Asuka.
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Without knowing Asuka's inner turmoil, Gridman can only watch the emotions that play out over her face. He's always been free with his own secrets. Any who won his trust was informed of his one-dual identity. It's a luxury Gridman doesn't even know he has.
"He was real." Gridman repeats. "I don't want to minimize..." A pause. "His existence." My exsistence. "Then I accept the feelings of others, regarding who they thought was Yuta. I briefly tried to behave as he did, but I no longer have the feel of it."
Asuka isn't fine. They both know it. Human or not, some things are universal.
"...I'm sorry. I know I have distressed you." That metallic sheen only increases. "The moment Alexis Kerib reveals himself, I will go to battle. Then, you all will be rid of me."
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Asuka listens to him, work through it. As he repeats after her, and she doesn't say anything. Whether it's good, or bad, or...
... whether it just is.
She's a big girl, she can handle the idea that Yuta was disposed of, like so much trash - reabsorbed back into the existence of Gridman...
... the moment he reawakened.
How is it any different than something she'd seen countless times before?
What he says though at the end? Her lip curls in disgust, "Tck." She clicks her tongue, "You'd like that wouldn't you? To just flee once the mission is done?"
Asuka glances sideways to look him in the eyes, barely simmering anger beneath the surface, "Leave the messy fallout to someone else to deal with - maybe just shift it all onto Rikka and Sho, so you don't have to grapple with anything 'uncomfortable'?"
Asuka's eyes just narrow, "Didn't figure Gridman to be such a coward."
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
"Flee?" Gridman, though his face doesn't move more than strictly necessary for speech, looks puzzled. "Is it not the purpose of those who fight to move on to their next battle, once one has ended?"5r
Oh.
Yellow eyes reflect nothing. Even as he tries to find the words, his eyes are steady, empty.
"I don't understand what is wanted of me. First you want Yuta Hibiki to return. Now you don't want me to leave." Gridman spells it out slowly. "Surely, the ideal thing is me to accomplish my mission and return to." A pause. "...wherever I came from."
"Asuka. If you were in my position, what would you do?" Gridman asks. Perhaps a direct question is the best way through this.
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
"Oh don't give me THAT!"
Now Asuka sounds angry as she points a finger right at him, leaning over the foot of his bed, "Moments ago you were acting like such a SAD SACK about having to deal with this all, and now it's all acting on 'logic'? Is that how you're going to play this?"
Asuka stares daggers at him, "I wasn't born yesterday. And neither were YOU! So don't you dare retreat into pretending to be some STUPID DOLL!"
However she then deescalates a touch, drawing herself back up, and crossing her arms, "I don't want him to return... I know he's gone. Dead's dead."
She starts to walk away, but then halts and looks over her shoulder, "If I were in your position?"
Asuka briefly entertains the idea of being her Original. It's a difficult thought experiment, "I'd DEAL with it. That's what I'd do. You think beating Alexis Kerib is all anyone here cares about?"
A singular blue eye is all that's visible, "He's a starting point, but he's not everything."
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Gridman blinks, pulling back instinctively from the finger pointed at him. Asuka is yelling, and that fervor is back in her voice. This is like Eisen all over again -- somehow, he's hit a nerve. In a familiar gesture, those yellow eyes fly wide.
"Asuka." Gridman murmurs, nowhere near able to match her intensity. It's heavy, bearing the weight of her scorn. "I see. I will attempt to." A long pause. "...be honest with my presentation. Perhaps I may emulate the strength of your own will."
She's leaving. It's better to let her go. He's sure he's only made things worse, once again. One of his hands clenches in the blanket, irritating the catheter inserted in the skin there. It stings, but the feeling is distant, as though happening to someone else.
"...deal with it. Beyond Alexis Kerib. I see. I will discuss this with my comrades." Gridman's voice echoes in the little room, despite his low volume. "Asuka... Thank you for coming by. You've been honest with me. I'm grateful."
<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.
Asuka seems unimpressed by his response, but all she does is cluck her tongue and stop yelling. She knows there's /emotion/ in there.
You don't just say things like 'you all will be rid of me' and imply they'd be better off without there being something in there.
He's no Shikinami or Ayanami doll even if it'd be easier if he was.
"... Yeah?" Is her response to him saying he'll discuss it with his comrades, "Which, comrades?"
There's the heaviness of the implication, of whether he means the people who have fought with him against Alexis Kerib...
... or his fellow Hyperagents. Obviously it's a position, which means there are more.
"Don't thank me. Wasn't here to see you - or him. I just heard someone trying not to be a doll, and thought I'd listen in."
Asuka's eyes turn away from him, "... Try harder." As she leaves the room, her footsteps take her down the hallway, and it's only once she's out of audible range that she murmurs, "Didn't even do that."
Be honest, she means.